Warlock sub-mastery drama.

[MrSonic]

I recently created a pure INT Warlock, and so far i love it! Thanks to HP drain and de-buffs i can easily take on giants higher then me if i'm not lagging and the Blood Flowers(or whatever their name is) hit a lot harder then expected so my grinding is almost as fast as on my Wizard.

But now i face a pretty big problem, which sub-mastery, Bard or Cleric?

Yes i know i know everyone says that Cleric is the best for pure INTs, but i play on Odin and there are plenty of decent parties here starting from the Polipemos at Desperado Hill and all the way to lv 80. And since Cleric became a pretty popular build over time, and i will spend 95% of my time in a party, i wonder on the usefulness(is that a word?) of taking that as sub-mastery. Any decent Cleric knows that INTs are a priority when it comes to buffing so most of the time i will already be fully buffed. So the only way i see Cleric as a useful sub in is PvP, and even then Warlock is nearly invincible in PvP, you don't even need extra survivability because Stun+de-buffs+Sleep+a few nukes = enemy lying with his face in the dirt.

And Bard is a lot more useful in solo too.

But hey, i'm not a big professional of Warlocks, i made one for fun a long time ago but never got it past 1x so everything that i know about them is stuff that i read here, so which sub-mastery would be better in my case?

[whiteforest]

Personally, I prefer bard because it was much easier to solo with. All the debuffs and curses eat up a lot of MP, so with bard it's much easier to use Tuning Noise to charge your MP bar right back up. This is probably useful in parties if there isn't a bard, or if they're busy watching the wizard's MP. If suddenly a giant spawns on you, you can focus on it without getting mobbed by other stuff if you have noise, and free speed is always good.

I also found that switching weapons all the time to heal yourself in the middle of battle made weapon switching complicated (at least, before lvl 30 when you get the recovery divisiony thing) whereas with bard you just cast the buffs and never switch weapons again until it's time to recast. Also, bard as a subclass doesn't cost as much SP as you might need for cleric.

[torinchibi]

Backup cleric = higher party survival, more useful in mass pvp, and we all know it's much more useful in solo PvP. As a warlock, you also don't have any buffs that will prevent you from switching (because they stop) so you can pull off bless spell any time, and that will make you wtf pwnage. Also, you can stun, switch and do offering, and it's almost always sure kill. Cleric sub is significantly more useful for a pure int because of offering, especially when your main class can stun on demand.

[Astra]

Backup cleric = higher party survival, more useful in mass pvp, and we all know it's much more useful in solo PvP. As a warlock, you also don't have any buffs that will prevent you from switching (because they stop) so you can pull off bless spell any time, and that will make you wtf pwnage. Also, you can stun, switch and do offering, and it's almost always sure kill. Cleric sub is significantly more useful for a pure int because of offering, especially when your main class can stun on demand.

+1
One extra bless in parties is a BIG help, plus if you get the group healings + str/int buffs, you gonna lvl up pretty fast as a cleric when there is a need for cleric...so the cleric sub is kinda plvl for your warlock.